Quote of the Day (Nancy Mitford, on Boredom)

“I am sometimes bored by people, but never by life.”—English novelist-historian Nancy Mitford (1904-1973), The Blessing (1951)

Quote of the Day (Nancy Mitford, on How to Marry for Love or Money)

“If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.”― English novelist, biographer and journalist Nancy Mitford (1904-1973), Christmas Pudding (1932)

Quote of the Day (Nancy Mitford, on Occupying a Dog’s Time)

“Even if I take him out for three hours every day, and go and chat to him for another hour, that leaves twenty hours for him all alone with nothing to do. Oh, why can't dogs read?” ― Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (1945)

The pooch looking at you now is named Bentley. I met him on a vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., this past fall, and he fascinated me enough that I made him the subject of a prior post. Even though Nancy Mitford was an aristocrat with more high-toned tastes than mine, I don’t think that Bentley would have had any trouble securing and sustaining her affection, either.

Quote of the Day (Nancy Mitford, on an ‘Orgy of Merrieness at Yule’)

“But although each season of the year had its own merrie little rite it was at Christmas time that Lady Bobbin and her disciples in the neighbourhood really came into their own, the activities which she promoted during the rest of the year merely paving the way for an orgy of merrieness at Yule....

[E]very year at Compton Bobbin the German and Sussex customs were made to play their appointed parts. Thus the Christmas Tree, Christmas stockings and other activities of Santa Claus, and the exchange through the post of endless cards and calendars (German); the mistletoe and holly decorations, the turkeys, the boar's head, and the succession of carol singers and mummers (Sussex Roman Catholic); and the unlimited opportunity to over-eat on every sort of unwholesome food washed down with honest beer, which forms the groundwork for both schools of thought, combined to provide the ingredients of Lady Bobbin's Christmas Pudding.”— Christmas Pudding, by Nancy Mitford (1932)